"Then I shall certainly call them sticks," said Aunt Susannah
decisively. "They are not in the least like clubs."
"Shall I drive off?" I inquired desperately of Amanda.
"Drive off? Where to? Why are you going away?" asked Aunt Susannah.
"Besides, you can't go--the carriage is out of sight."
"The way you begin is called driving off," I explained laboriously.
"Like this." I drove nervously, because I felt her eye upon me. The ball
went some dozen yards.
"That seems easy enough," said Aunt Susannah. "Give me a stick, child."
"Not that end--the _other_ end!" cried Amanda, as our relative prepared
to make her stroke with the butt-end.
"Dear me! Isn't that the handle?" she remarked cheerfully; and she
reversed her club, swung it, and chopped a large piece out of the links.
"Where is it gone? Where is it gone?" she exclaimed, looking wildly
round.
"It--it isn't gone," said Amanda nervously, and pointed to the ball
still lying at her feet.
"What an extraordinary thing!" cried Aunt Susannah; and she made another
attempt, with a precisely similar result. "Give me another stick!" she
demanded. "Here, let me choose for myself--this one doesn't suit me.
I'll have that flat thing."
"But that's a putter," Amanda explained agonisedly.
"What's a putter? You said just now that they were all clubs," said Aunt
Susannah, pausing.
"They are all clubs," I explained patiently. "But each has a different
name."
"You don't mean to say you give them names like a little girl with her
dolls?" cried Aunt Susannah. "Why, what a babyish game it is!" She
laughed very heartily. "At any rate," she continued, with that
determination which some of her friends call by another name, "I am sure
that this will be easier to play with!" She grasped the putter, and in
some miraculous way drove the ball to a considerable distance.
"Oh, splendid!" cried Amanda. Her troubled brow cleared a little, and
she followed suit, with mediocre success. Aunt Susannah pointed out that
her ball had gone farther than either of ours, and grasped her putter
tenaciously.
"It's a better game than I expected from your description," she
conceded. "Oh, I daresay I shall get to like it. I must come and
practise every day." We glanced at each other in a silent horror of
despair, and Aunt Susannah after a few quite decent strokes,
triumphantly holed out. "What next?" said she.
I hastily arranged her ball on the second tee: but the luck of golf is
proverbially capricious. She swung her club, and hit nothing. She swung
it again, and hit the ground.
"_Why_ can't I do it?" she demanded, turning fiercely upon me.
"You keep losing your feet," I explained deferentially.
"Spare me your detestable slang terms, Laurence, at least!" she cried,
turning on me again like a whirlwind. "If you think I have lost my
temper--which is absurd!--you might have the courage to say so in plain
English!"
"Oh, no, Aunt Susannah!" I said. "You don't understand----"
"Or want to," she snapped. "Of all silly games----"
"I mean you misunderstood me," I pursued, trembling. "Your foot slipped,
and that spoilt your stroke. You should have nails in your boots, as we
have."
"Oh!" said Aunt Susannah, only half pacified. But she succeeded in
dislodging her ball at last, and driving it into a bunker. At the same
moment, Amanda suddenly clutched me by the arm. "Oh, Laurence!" she said
in a bloodcurdling whisper. "_What_ shall we do? Here is Colonel
Bartlemy!"
The worst had happened. The hottest-tempered man in the club, the oldest
member, the best player, the greatest stickler for etiquette, was hard
upon our track; and Aunt Susannah, with a red and determined
countenance, was urging her ball up the bunker, and watching it roll
back again.
"Dear Auntie," said Amanda, in her sweetest voice, "you had much better
take it out."
"Is that allowed?" inquired our relative suspiciously.
"Oh, you may always do that and lose a stroke!" I assured her eagerly.
"I shan't dream of losing a stroke!" said Aunt Susannah, with decision.
"I'll get it out of this ditch by fair means, if I have to spend all day
over it!"
"Then do you mind waiting one moment?" I said, with the calmness of
despair. "There is a player behind us----"
"Let him stay behind us! I was here first," said Aunt Susannah; and she
returned to her bunker.
The Links rose up in a hillock immediately behind us, so that our
successor could not see us until he had reached the first hole. I stood
with my eye glued to the spot where he might be expected to appear. I
saw, as in a nightmare, the scathing remarks that would find their way
into the Suggestion Book. I longed for a sudden and easy death.
At the moment when Colonel Bartlemy's rubicund face appeared over the
horizon, Aunt Susannah, flushed but unconquered, drew herself up for a
moment's rest from toil. He had seen her. Amanda shut her eyes. For
myself, I would have run away shamelessly, if there had been any place
to run to. The Colonel and Aunt Susannah looked hard at each other. Then
he began to hurry down the slope, while she started briskly up it.
"Miss Cadwalader!" said the Colonel.
"Colonel Bartlemy!" cried Aunt Susannah; and they met with effusion.
I saw Amanda's eyes open, and grow round with amazed interest. I knew
perfectly well that she had scented a bygone love affair, and was
already planning the most suitable wedding-garb for Aunt Susannah. A
frantic hope came to me that in that case the Colonel's affection might
prove stronger than his zeal for golf. They were strolling down to us in
a leisurely manner, and the subject of their conversation broke upon my
astonished ears.
"I'm afraid you don't think much of these Links, after yours," Colonel
Bartlemy was saying anxiously. "They are rather new----"
"Oh, I've played on many worse," said Aunt Susannah, looking round her
with a critical eye. "Let me see--I haven't seen you since your victory
at Craigmory. Congratulations!"
"Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley!" purred the Colonel, evidently
much gratified. "You will be here for the twenty-seventh, I hope?"
"Exactly what I came for," said Aunt Susannah calmly.
"Though I don't know what our ladies will say to playing against the
Cranford Champion!" chuckled the Colonel; and then they condescended to
become aware of our existence. We had never known before how exceedingly
small it is possible to feel.
"Aunt Susannah, what am I to say? What fools you must think us!" I
murmured miserably to her, when the Colonel was out of earshot looking
for his ball. "We are such raw players ourselves--and of course we never
dreamt----"
Aunt Susannah twinkled at me in a friendly manner. "There's an ancient
proverb about eggs and grandmothers," she remarked cheerfully.
"There should be a modern form for golf-balls and aunts--hey, Laurence?"
Amanda did not win the prize brooch; but Aunt Susannah did, in spite of
an overwhelming handicap, and gave it to her. She does not often wear
it--possibly because rubies are not becoming to her: possibly because
its associations are too painful.
* * * * *
[Illustration:
THE RETORT COURTEOUS.--(_The Major-General waiting to drive, to girl
carrying baby, who blocks the way_). "Now then, hurry on please with
that baby." _Girl._ "Garn! Baby yerself, playing at ball there in
your knickerbockers an' all!"]
* * * * *
[Illustration: